The Things We Live For
by Ilea Dreike
Summary: The Last Battle is over, and many are dead. With the threat of the newly victorious Lord Voldemort hanging over the survivors' heads, it seems odd that anything quite as normal as Christmas could still exist. Oneshot.


1The Things We Live For

_Written for Challenge 2 _

_by IleaDreike of Ravenclaw_

_Challenge Two: Ending of a New Beginning  
_

_**Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.**- Maria Robertson_

In a small house, on a small hill, there lived a few people, a family- of sorts...

It's the first Christmas after the Last Battle, and life has started over again. For a few people, living far, far away, it's a bit harder to acclimate to a normal life, after the trials and tribulations of War. Challenge Two of Winter Snows is about starting a new chapter in life, after years of hardship and hard work finally paying off. How do they adjust? What's different? What's the same? Who's still alive, and how do they deal with the memories of the dead?

Rules and Requirements for the Ending of a New Beginning Challenge:

1. It has to be post-War, and one side needs to have won- this means that either Voldemort or Harry- or both- need to be dead.

2. There need to be several people, not all of them related, living together or at least spending the holidays together.

3. At least one reference to Christmas gifts must be made.

Disclaimer: Someday, I'm going to write a book or produce a movie, just so that I can write a fanfiction about it and say, "It's mine." Until that time, I do not own anything that anyone would have any reason to write a fanfiction about, especially something as big and as fanfictiony as Harry Potter. So don't sue me.

The Things We Live For

_How do you go on living after something like that?_

So many dead.

Their bodies had littered the site of the Last Battle, as it was referred to—though they all knew that there would be many battles to come—and now their memories littered the minds of those unfortunate enough to be left alive.

None of them had seen it coming.

They had been worried, of course, because they had felt obligated to be worried. The boy was up against the most powerful wizard in existence, after all. But somewhere, in the backs of their minds, they had known without a doubt that Harry Potter would defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all. Everything would be right with the world, because they were fighting to save the world, not to harm it. They were the _good_ guys, the _heroes_, and so they would win.

But this was not some children's storybook, and that's what they never seemed able to remember. This was real, and when things were real there was no guarantee of anything. When things were real, people died—and no matter how much you refused to believe it, they stayed dead.

"Could you… could you pass the potatoes, please?" came a small, timid voice from his right. Remus did so without a word, handing the plate to the red-haired child, and the table lapsed back into silence. There had been a lot of silence lately.

He glanced up at the thin, pale faces around him. They had automatically spread themselves out, as if to fill in the vacant spaces, but it still seemed empty, and eerily devoid of laughter. One couldn't help but admire Molly for her valiant efforts to gather those left, but it didn't feel right, somehow, to be celebrating something as happy as Christmas when so many were missing.

The Last Battle… it had been nothing short of a mass slaughter. Once Harry had gone down, they had all known it was hopeless. Perhaps that was why they had seemed suddenly weaker, fewer, than they were—if Harry couldn't do it, after all, no number of them could possibly hope to. Many among their number had given up altogether and stopped trying to block the attacks thrown at them. And now the Order of the Phoenix had been reduced to a few peaky faces sitting around Molly Weasley's table.

No, he corrected himself—there were more than the few sitting here. Minerva McGonagall was still alive and had presumably gone into hiding, along with Kingsley Shacklebolt and Emmeline Vance. Provided that Voldemort hadn't seen fit to kill them, that is; there was really no way to know. The only ones that he _knew_ were still alive were the six members staying here at the Burrow: Molly, who was proving to be stronger than they'd ever given her credit for; Arthur, who rarely came downstairs and wasn't at the table now; Charlie, the poor boy, who was holding up better than anyone could have asked him to; there was Alastor Moody; Hestia Jones; and, of course himself.

Six.

Their number was down to six.

This was not, of course, counting Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, who had fought alongside them although they were not technically a part of the Order. Still, they were too few to ever hope for—

_CRASH._

Remus jumped, nearly knocking his plate into his lap, and looked around frantically for a moment to see what had caused the noise before he remembered that he was no longer on the battlefield. Molly, it seemed, had stood up so abruptly that she'd knocked her chair over. She excused herself from the table in a voice that sounded near cracking, and she dashed out of the kitchen.

Charlie stood up an instant later, concern etched on his face. It gave the impression, Remus thought, that the boy was far older than he really was. _How old _is_ he?_ Remus couldn't remember. The boy followed his mother out of the room, probably to see if she was all right, but there was really no need to ask. Her muffled sobs spoke for themselves. She was trying so hard to be strong, but it was obvious that Molly Weasley would never be all right again. Bill and the twins were dead, and Percy was as good as—he had disappeared shortly before the battle and hadn't been seen in the months since.

Had it really been months?

Yes, he supposed it had. He supposed that by now they should have picked up the scattered pieces of their shattered lives. They should be living while they still could, before Voldie decided it was time to pick off the last straggling members of the Order.

_But how do you forget something like that?_

Yes, it had been months. It felt like days—hours, even—but the truth of it was that time had not slowed to allow him to mourn, to allow him to catch up with his life, or whatever was left of it. Time had sped up cruelly, shoving him toward whatever lay ahead, and paying no heed to the fact that he wasn't ready to face it.

There was some comfort in knowing that he was not prepared, emotionally or otherwise. It meant a short battle, after all. He could not fight it, could not stop it, so it was best to sit back and let it happen. It was not a view he'd taken before, this passive defeatism. But then, nothing like this had happened before.

Nothing had hit him this close to the heart.

They had been running—him and her and Mad-Eye—because there was no hope. They had been running because Harry Potter was dead and there was nothing left to do but run. And then there had been a flash of light, and the three of them had been thrown backward, away from the boundary between Hogwarts Grounds and the outside, open-to-Apparition world.

And then, from the shadows cast by the trees, a thin woman with stringy black hair and hooded eyelids had emerged, wand drawn. And Remus had known right then that they were all going to die, because now other hooded figures were emerging. His first instinct was to step in front of the girl next to him, to shield her from whatever was coming—but she had stepped forward, pushing him out of the way. "So nice of you to stop by, Auntie Bella," she had begun, her voice painfully weak, and Bellatrix had only sneered. So Tonks had continued, despite Remus's attempts to make her be quiet. "Tell me," she said, her voice growing steadier, "does your master know that you can't even take out your clumsy little niece without half a dozen men to help you?"

Remus had known what would happen in that very instant; the murderous gleam in Bellatrix's eyes was a hard one to mistake. He'd jumped forward, or tried to, but Mad-Eye had a firm grip on his arm and was pulling him the wrong way, away from Tonks… but her mocking laughter echoed toward him. He could _hear_ the false bravado, the underlying fear.

And then she began to scream, and Remus thought the sound would surely kill him.

"Apparate," commanded a grizzly voice near his ear, and Remus had obeyed, not thinking about where he was going. He had allowed Moody to guide him far, far away from the battleground that had once been the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He had escaped, leaving Tonks to the Death Eaters.

He knew that he needed to forget. But even as he sat at Molly's table on Christmas Eve, safe for the moment, his mind could not quell the memory of her final laugh, her final scream, and the horrible way that the one melted into the other.

_How do you forget?_

_-----_

"Ron?"

"_What_?"

Hermione winced slightly at the aggression in his voice.

Ron didn't care.

"Are… are you all right?"

What a stupid question. Ron ignored it, choosing instead to stare at the merrily leaping flames in the fireplace, which kept them warm as they sat around on sofas and on the floor. How the fire could be merry at all when everything was so _(unfair)_ somber, he wasn't sure. But there they were, dancing cheerfully, blissfully unaware that their optimism was not appreciated.

"Ron?" came Hermione's voice again.

There was a moment of heavy silence. Then he answered softly, "Do I _look_ all right, Hermione?"

She sighed and moved closer to him, placing an arm around his shoulders. A few months ago he might have taken this opportunity to lean over and kiss her, or maybe cuddle close to her, but right now she was just annoying him. She was so calm, so _(over it)_ composed. Harry Potter, his best mate, the Boy-Who-Bloody-Lived, was dead, and Hermione didn't have the decency to even _pretend_ to be overwhelmed with grief.

Ron ignored her sympathetic gaze and stood up angrily. With one defiant glare around the room, he turned around and stormed out, ignoring the matching looks of hurt on his mother's face and on Hermione's. He was too angry to care who he hurt.

Harry hadn't cared.

Harry had abandoned them, left them all to die.

He could have fled, could have come back to fight You-Know-Who another day—but _no_, he had wanted to _stay_. He had wanted to be a damned _martyr_. Problem was, martyrs rarely helped anyone. Had he even thought about who was counting on him, how many lives were tied to his own? Had he cared about _(me)_ the people who needed him? Well, he had his martyrdom, his glorious defeat. His name would be remembered, sure. And where did that leave the rest of them?

_Dead_, thought Ron, as he slammed his bedroom door shut. _That leaves the rest of us dead._

_-----_

Percy's old bedroom had long ago been converted into an office, of sorts. There wasn't much of that stiff, official air that was usually associated with offices, but the important thing was that Percy had been purged from this room. Photographs, books, and every other thing that he hadn't seen fit to take with him two and a half years ago had been permanently removed; Arthur had seen to that the day after his son had stormed off to London.

This was where he spent his time these days, wishing that something—_anything_—of his son had survived.

But Arthur had been very thorough in his fury, and so he had no one to blame but himself. He hadn't driven Percy away completely on his own, but he had been too stubborn to forgive him… and now the time for forgiveness had passed.

A door slammed shut somewhere. Arthur didn't look up from the papers on his desk. Stolen heirlooms, smuggled cauldrons… they were all cases that had seemed important once upon a time, but that had been before the Last Battle. Now the only purpose they served was to give him something else to think about.

Merlin knew he needed it; the guilt was overwhelming sometimes.

He had wanted nothing more than to protect his family. They had always been his world, his reason for living. He would have given his life to save any one of them, had he been there, right by their side, where they had needed him.

As it was, he hadn't even seen their bodies. Three sons dead—it had been confirmed by various others who'd been there—and one missing.

And he hadn't been able to do anything about it.

-----

"Ron?" There was a short, frustrated pause. "Ron, you're not fooling anyone. I know you're in there, and I know you're awake."

Ron said nothing. For a minute he hoped that maybe she would leave him alone and go bother somebody else, but that turned out to be too much to hope for.

"You can't stay in there all night."

"Yes, I can."

Hermione let out a sigh that was audible through the thick wood of the door. "Listen, Ron, I know you're upset. But you're not going to bring him back by acting childish."

"Childish?" Ron finally threw the door open, his face contorted with fury. "_Childish_? How d'you _want_ me to act, Hermione? Like everything's sunshine and daisies?"

"Well, I would have expected you to act a little less stupid about it, if that's what you're asking," she replied condescendingly.

The fact that she was not yet losing her composure only infuriated him further. Anything would have been better than that scornful tone, be it yelling or screaming or hexing. "Well, just because _you_ don't care that he's dead doesn't mean that—"

"_Don't you _dare _tell me I don't care that he's dead_!"

The shrill cry was unexpected enough to stun Ron into silence, causing a long and awkward pause, during which he felt rather ashamed of himself as Hermione shed the first tears he'd seen from her in months.

Not ashamed enough, however, to stop being mad at her.

After all, wasn't it partially her own fault? She had been the one to come pounding on his door when he'd made it rather obvious that he didn't want to be bothered, right? And if he wanted to be upset about it, didn't he have a right to? Harry had always been the one to get the _(glory)_ difficult challenges. He'd always been the person that everyone turned to when they needed someone to _(admire)_ get them out of trouble, be it from merpeople, Death Eaters, or even You-Know-Who.

So he should have been ready. Even if his own will to live hadn't been enough to pull him through, he should have thought about the responsibility he carried by being so _(famous)_ powerful. Ron felt sure that, had he truly thought about what was at stake, he couldn't have died. He just _couldn't_ have.

But to try to explain this to Hermione would have been a complete waste of time. He had dealt with her before when she was in an emotional state like this one, albeit never quite of this magnitude, and he knew that reasoning with her would have been impossible.

He opened his mouth to tell her to go away, to go care about Harry's death somewhere where she didn't have to bother _him_ with it.

She, however, seemed to have something to say as well, and she beat him to it. So he sat down on his bed, still fuming, and he let her yell and scream and hex.

-----

Charlie poked his head in, sporting a courageous but ineffective attempt at a smile. "Hey, Dad," he said, stepping into the office, "are you planning on coming downstairs?"

"No, Charlie," replied Arthur, picking up a quill to make a note of some unimportant detail regarding smuggled dragon hides.

His son hesitated for a moment. "Are you sure?" he pressed, adding, "We're going to open the gifts at midnight, since nobody really wants to sleep."

Arthur glanced at a clock sitting on the corner of his desk. _11:13_, it read. He looked back up at his son, then back down at his paperwork. "I might come down around then, in that case," he said, though it was rather obvious by his tone that he also _might_ light his hair on fire and dance around the kitchen table singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of his lungs.

Neither, however, was likely to happen—_especially_ the former.

"Dad—"

"_What_, Charlie?"

"How long are you going to sit in here and ignore your family?" The sudden coldness in Charlie's voice got his attention more than the words themselves. "Bill and Percy and the twins may not be here anymore… but _we are_."

"Charlie—"

But Charlie was on a roll now, and he would not be stopped so easily. "If you're going to sit around and feel bad, fine." His voice softened. "But what if it's Ron next time? Or Mum?"

Arthur's mouth had been half-open with words that no longer seemed within his reach. Charlie misinterpreted this silence as an unwillingness to listen to him, and so he sighed and closed the door, leaving his father alone in his "office."

With a dejected sigh, Arthur placed his head in his hands and thought about his son's words. As scalding as they were, he couldn't deny that there was truth in them—if Ron were to die tomorrow, wouldn't he regret not having spent more time with him?

_There's nothing I can do about Percy and the others,_ he mused,and was surprised to findthat there was less pain in the realization than he would have expected.

And so Arthur Weasley stood up and walked downstairs to join his family.

-----

"Hermione, calm _down_! I didn't mean—"

"I _know_ what you meant, Ron, and I can't believe you would insult his memory like that!"

"I wasn't—"

"You were _supposed_ to be his friend, Ron, his best _friend_, and now you're blaming him for failing! You're blaming him for not being able to save _your_ jealous little—"

"_Jealous_? Jealous of what, Hermione, _what_?"

"You've _always_ been jealous of him, Ron, and don't try to tell me you weren't!" Their voices were both loud enough to carry throughout the small house, but neither seemed to care. "Just because _he_ was the one to have to save us—"

"You think _I_ wanted to do that?" He was incredulous. "You think _I_ wanted to fight You-Know-Who and—"

"Well, you seem to think you could have done a better job than he did!"

"I do _not_!"

"You _do_!"

"_I do not_!"

"Then _why_ do you blame him for not being able to win?" she shouted. "Why can't you just _accept_ that he did his best and it wasn't enough?"

"Because if he'd done his best, he'd still be alive!"

"That's _not_ true, Ron, and you _know_ it's not!" Hermione was positively livid as she stood across from him, looking mad enough to pull out her wand and hex him into a million angry little pieces.

"If he hadn't been so concerned with his bloody _image_, he would have run away and then he'd still be alive!" he shot back, equally irate.

"Yes, Ron, he'd still be alive." Her voice had softened dangerously, and was now barely audible—but it was shaking with anger, and it was quite a bit scarier than it would have been had she still been yelling at him. "He'd still be here, and he never would have been able to live with himself."

"What are you going on abou—"

"Don't you get it, Ron?" She glared at him angrily. "He's run before. After the Triwizard Tournament, in the Department of Mysteries—but this was at _Hogwarts_, Ron. His _friends_ were in danger. And, unlike certain people, he _cared_ about his friends. Enough to die to try and save them."

"Are you trying to say that I don't—"

"I'm not _trying_ to say it, Ron. I'm _saying_ it."

There was a long silence. Ron glared at Hermione, and Hermione glared at Ron, and anyone watching would have predicted that the wands would come out in under a minute.

But anger, it seemed, was short-lived tonight, and after a few minutes they seemed to grow tired of glaring. Ron sighed and lowered his eyes… and after a moment, Hermione did the same.

The pause stretched on for what seemed like ages.

Then: "I miss him."

"I know." Hermione sighed and finally met his eyes. "So do I."

And they stood there for a few moments in a companionable silence, forgiving each other for hurtful words and missing Harry Potter together.

-----

The room was empty except for two people. Everyone else was either upstairs or in the kitchen with Molly, preparing some sort of fruitcake. Mad-Eye was there, but Remus didn't even notice him until he spoke. "You all right?"

He nearly jumped as the grizzly voice intruded on his thoughts. "Yeah," he replied absently, now over the initial shock.

"No, you're not."

Remus raised an eyebrow, wondering vaguely why Mad-Eye had even bothered asking the question when he'd already known the answer. "All right, fine," he conceded at last. "I'm not."

"You're thinking about it too much."

"And what am I supposed to do, then?" he asked wearily. "I can't forget it, believe me. I've tried."

"No," said Mad-Eye, both eyes trained on the fire. Remus wished that the man would at least look at him, so it wouldn't feel so much like he was talking to some mystical old seer or something. But Mad-Eye only continued to focus his sight on some spot in the fireplace as he continued. "No, it doesn't do to forget."

Remus sighed, frustrated. _What is he _talking_ about? _

He _wanted_ to forget, he knew that much. He couldn't continue like this, dead to the world. He wanted to forget it, all of it—but every time he tried to forget about the happenings at that final battle at Hogwarts, the memories only came back to him, stronger than before. They washed over him like a flood, and as hard as he tried to fight the waves, there was no point denying the fact that he didn't know how to swim in this kind of water.

"You need to move on."

Remus jumped again. He had forgotten about Mad-Eye in the few moments of silence. His surprise quickly turned to an impatient sort of irritation, however. "I told you," he shot back, "I've _tried_ to—"

"Living and forgetting," interrupted Mad-Eye, "are not the same thing."

"What's that supposed to—"

"_Arthur?_"

Remus turned to see Molly, Ginny, and Hestia returning to the living room. Molly's face bore a look of shock as she stopped abruptly, causing Hestia and Ginny to bump into her and nearly knock the large, iced fruitcake out of her hands.

He followed Molly's stunned gaze and was equally surprised to see her husband, descending from his aloofness for possibly the first time since Remus had arrived two days ago. He blinked, momentarily forgetting his own plight as the two Weasleys embraced.

"I didn't think you were going to come down tonight," said Molly timidly, but Arthur appeared too busy apologizing profusely to hear her. Remus glanced away sheepishly, trying to find something else to look at, and his eyes landed on Ginny, who was now holding the fruitcake.

She and Hestia were talking, smiling, exhibiting the first signs of cheer that he'd seen in months. Perhaps it was simply Arthur's sudden presence that gave them all some kind of optimism, or maybe they had finally remembered that there were only a few minutes until Christmas.

Whatever the reason, the effects were more than doubled when Ron and Hermione came down the stairs a few minutes later, hand in hand, and neither looking half as sour as they had when they'd gone up.

They weren't ecstatic, exactly. Remus doubted very much that they would ever experience the same kind of happiness as they had on Christmases past. But they appeared content, and even—as difficult as it was to believe—hopeful.

Not hopeful for a bright and happy future. Not hopeful for the demise of the Dark Lord, or the revival of friends and family that had been lost, or even for another Christmas with the friends and the family that they had now. None of those things were likely, and nobody was hopeful about them.

But they were alive, and that in itself was enough to bring them a sad, strange kind of hope.

_Living and forgetting are not the same thing._

Remus smiled, and it was the first real smile he'd worn since the battle. There would be many battles to come, he knew, and there would be many more deaths. Because Voldemort, the Dark Lord of death, was the ruler now, and there was nothing that anybody could do to change that fact. There was no guarantee that they would live another week.

But despite that knowledge, despite the memories… they were alive now.

So Remus lived.

He opened presents. He ate fruitcake. He smiled and laughed and talked.

And, for that one Christmas day, Remus remembered without trying to stop himself. He remembered Tonks, and he remembered the Weasley boys, and he remembered the members of the Order of the Phoenix who weren't there to celebrate with them.

He remembered.

And for one day… he lived.

-----

_FIN_

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** Okay, okay... not very good. It was a little rushed. Er,a_ lot_ rushed. Whatever. > Anyway, reviews are still appreciated, be they good or bad.And have a merry Christmas, everyone!

Ilea Dreike


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